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Stress at Work – What are the Symptoms and How to Overcome?

Introduction

Numerous employees experience stress at their workplace. This can be owing to much pressure at work or rapid shift in hours. Change in nature of job with passage of time has considerably increased the need for a great performance and competition everywhere. In fact, stress now is being regarded as a great concern at every workplace. Such situations often lead to unpleasant feelings like headaches, lethargy, anxiety attacks, backaches, etc. Further, this can result in lack of efficiency and long-term diseases, if not taken proper care.

What is Stress?

In general terms, stress can be applied to numerous physiologic and psychologic pressures that people experience in their life. Stress can either bring out the best in you or make situations worse accordingly.

Pessimistic and Optimistic Sides of Stress

# Positive

Stress can be considered positive when it provides you with an opportunity to achieve something. It actually works as motivator to peak your performance up.

# Negative

It is negative when you face severe problems in relation to social, emotional, organizational and physical.

In most of the cases although, it has been seen that stress has affected negatively in lives of people mentally and physically. Factors resulting in stress are known as stressors.

How to Know that Stress is Affecting Your Physical and Mental Health?

Below mentioned are some symptoms that signal you are the victim of stress.

# Weekend Headaches

Do you suffer headaches during weekends? This can be the result of stress from huge work pressure. Even such headaches can convert to migraines in lateral period. So, you should keep a check on your sleeping during weekdays and eating habits to reduce the triggers.

# Disrupted Sleep

A famous old rhyme – “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. Very true and even it is said that you should get at least 6 to 7 hours sound sleep so that you can get up afresh in the morning. However, when you are stressed; it is quite obvious to wake up more often, which disrupts your sleep. So, try to imagine good things of your life to welcome sleep. Try to prevent alcohol or caffeine when going to bed.

# Cognitive Symptoms

Often the cognitive symptoms reveal the possibility of stress at work, such as the following.

Indecisiveness- If you are facing hard time to make decisions and even if you make any decision finally, you are not confident about it, then it is a sign of stress.

Forcefulness- If you tend to be forceful towards your subordinates or co-workers unnecessarily, then it might be a symptom of stress. You might be relying on forcefulness to hide your lack of confidence or stress.

Negative thinking- Stress may cause lack of self belief and it can drain your energy. Ultimately, it leads to negative thinking and you start to lose confidence even doing a normal work.

Memory- Many studies have revealed that acute stress can an impact on your memory. If you are struggling to remember small things lately, then it might be a sign of stress.

Judgmental error- Like indecisiveness, stress can also lead to judgmental error. If you are not able to judge situations properly at work, it might be stress affecting you.

#Behavioral Symptoms

Certain behavioral symptoms are also noticed such as

Increased or Decreased Appetite- There is an unusual connection between stress and appetite. You might feel temporary loss of appetite or feel like overeating. Anxiety symptoms will definitely affect your appetite.

Neglecting responsibilities- Have you been neglecting responsibilities at work? Stress might lead you do so because it makes you feel less confident and affects your decision making ability.

Feeling isolated- Are you feeling lonely and isolating yourself from the world? This is a symptom of stress that can hamper your performance as a team player.

Depression- Too much of stress at work can lead to depression. Stress affects natural appetite, sleep, energy and many other important aspects that results in adverse changes in normal moods and emotions, which often leads to depression.

How to Prevent Stress

Learning how to identify stressors within and finding ways to overcome it can help you to live healthy in both personal and professional life. Here are some ways on how you can ease out stress:

# Humor

It is a quick and great tool to kick out stress from your life. This works as laughter generates valuable chemicals in your brain and helps you to think differently. To put it in other way, it diverts your mind from being stressed. Hence, many people feel much different and notice a great transformation after laughing at their heart thinking about something humorous.

# Understand What Your Organization Demands

Organizational goals are often being expressed in mission statement. Accordingly, you should determine how you could help the organization acquire its mission. Identify your objectives that can directly contribute to fulfill the organizational goals specifically. Make a note and then proceed.

# Change Your Way of Thinking

The more negative thoughts you will have in mind, the more it can effect on your physical and emotional well-being. Therefore, experts always suggest bringing a change in your way of thinking and you will get the results faster. Try to bring in positive thoughts in your mindset and your body will release chemicals that can make you sense better.

# Exercise Regularly

Exercising is an effective solution to get rid of many diseases and stress as well. The more you exercise, the more your brain will feel good and make you happy from within.

Other than these, maintaining a healthy and balanced diet and good sleeping habits can also work well in relieving you from stress.

Conclusion

Stress has now become a part of every man’s life. There can be several occasions when you can feel stressed out, but learning ways to overcome can relieve you from the problem completely.